The Hallowe’en Paradox

Posted: Sat 31 October, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Charm School, Cynicism, Domestic, Weirdness | Leave a comment »

In some ways I feel the same about Hallowe’en as I do about The Festering Season. Mainly it’s the paradoxes that annoy me.

In the case of Hallowe’en, we’ll float past the crap about grown people dressing up like kids and so on.

But what gets me is this :

For most of the year (excluding the run-up to the Festering Season and Hallowe’en) children get told to not talk to strangers, not accept sweets from strangers, not accept anything, so forth, so fifth.  But come the Festering Season, they’re told to talk to strangers about what they want, accept presents and all that shit. And come Hallowe’en, all of a sudden it’s fine for kids to dress up, go round the neighbourhood and knock on the doors of people they don’t know and have never met, and get sweets.

Which is – to me, anyway – just really fucking weird.

Hallowe’en Quizzage

Posted: Sat 31 October, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Domestic, Norfolk | Leave a comment »

As it’s Hallowe’en, our madcap village is going to be having its annual quiz tonight, where as many participants as possible dress up and get into (pardon the pun) the spirit of things.

Bizarrely, the entire thing is organised by the village church, held in the church hall, and all proceeds from ticket sales etc. go to the church. For a Hallowe’en event. Bizarre, I know.

As per the last couple of years, we’ll be down there along with other members of the family. It’s a fun night, and we normally do OK on it.  Even better, it means we get to avoid any little bastards who may be out doing trick or treat. Bonus.

Email Fuckwittage

Posted: Fri 30 October, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Customer Services, Security, Stupidity, Sweary, Technology, Work-related | Leave a comment »

Following on from the post a while back about the Marketing Manager for the Ireland distributor of a Japanese car sending out a marketing email with all the addresses CCd in instead of BCCd, I’ve had a couple more instances this week of email fuckwittage.

First of all, an email from a recruiter at Modis International (an Agency I dealt with once) who pimped out an email again using CC instead of BCC to throw it to loads of people. Even better, there were a number of fuckwits who then exacerbated the situation by using ‘Reply to All’ rather than ‘Reply’, and thus ended up spamming everyone themselves.

The second instance is even better though – at work, we’ve been setting up a secure site with SSL, and the company being used for the SSL certificate tried to email the equivalent of me@www.site.com instead of me@site.com . And tried it three times, without understanding what the problem was.

So all told, it’s been a bit of a week for fuckwits.

2012 Idiot Tax

Posted: Thu 29 October, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Stupidity, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

In yet another case of “There’s one born every minute”, the BBC has a story today about the fact people are already getting taken in by sites selling tickets for the London 2012 Olympics. That’s despite the fact that tickets won’t be going on sale until 2011…

As I’ve said before, the people who pay money to sites like that really just have more money than sense, and deserve to be taken for a ride. It’s like an idiot tax – if you’re an idiot, you will pay.

According to the story, “it is illegal to sell fake 2012 tickets in the UK, Olympic organisers said.” . But what happens if you’re not actually selling fake tickets? By that I mean that you’re advertising tickets – but not actually supplying even false ones.  Sure, it’s fraud etc. – but technically, it’s also not selling fake tickets. It’s ‘just’ taking money from morons.

I’m forever being told that I’ve got far too cynical a view of people and their stupidity. But still I see stories like this and I’m still amazed that no matter how low my expectations, people still go lower than them.

All You Can Eat

Posted: Thu 29 October, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Business, Own Business, People, Thoughts, Travel, Work-related | 1 Comment »

Seeing this story on the BBC about Taybarns (an all-you-can-eat restaurant whose business is growing during the recession) I was reminded about something I was going to write during my time down in London staying at a Travelodge, and again saw the other weekend when we stayed down in Berkshire. Buffet-style catering – and particularly buffet-style breakfasts.

Personally, I try to stay pretty sane in ‘all you can eat’ environments. From what I’ve seen at Travelodges and the like though, I seem to be in the minority in that aspect.

I lost count of the number of times I’d see people with plates piled high with food for breakfast and/or going back for second, third even (on one memorable occasion) fourth helpings. Obviously some people were just hungry, but others were doing it out of greed, and some kind of misplaced “Well I’ve paid for this so I’m going to get every single penny’s worth out of it” attitude.

I don’t understand that attitude – no, that’s not true. I can see the way some people’s minds work. I just don’t like it, and it’s not a mindset that will ever sit with me. I’d rather have the food I want, not necessarily what I feel I deserve, or that is mine because I’ve paid £x for it.

There’s more to this, I just haven’t yet got it straight enough in my head to be able to get it written down properly.

Stating the Obvious (Yet Again)

Posted: Wed 28 October, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, Cynicism, News, Thoughts | 1 Comment »

Monday’s verdict from the inquest into the death of three men in an RAF Puma helicopter was a perfect exercise in “No shit, sherlock”.

Apparently, “the pilot was attempting manoeuvres beyond his capabilities“.

Which is pretty obvious when you think about it. After all, the helicopter crashed.

The news coverage though was even better – and how they didn’t end up with a really rude answer, I don’t know.  It’s another of those situations where I’m glad I’m not involved in this kind of idiocy, because my response would’ve been rude, insensitive and many other things.

At one point the reporter asked “So was the helicopter flying too low?”. Of course it fucking was, it ended up flying into the ground.

Unwell – Additional

Posted: Tue 27 October, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Health, Thoughts | 1 Comment »

Following on from yesterday’s post about Hound being unwell, she’s definitely getting over it.

What I forgot to add to yesterday’s post though – and the subject for this one – is that because of taking her to the vets again on Monday, I had to let the new workplace know I was going to be in later than usual. So I sent them an email on Sunday night, explaining that the dog was ill etc., and I’d be in late.

It was only afterwards that I started having second thoughts, thinking that it sounded

  1. a bit like just an excuse for a lie-in
  2. like I must be a bit daft when it comes to Hound etc.

In the end, I rationalised it a bit by thinking “Well, if it were a child, they’d fully understand that we had to go to a hospital for extra checks and so on“.  And in a lot of ways, Hound is to us what a child is to a lot of other couples. (No, not “A pain in the arse, that deserves regular beating”) While we’re not the kind of moronic fuck-knuckles who dress a dog up in clothes, or treat it like a surrogate child, we have invested one hell of a lot of time, energy and money in Hound over the years in a similar way to a ‘normal’ family.

Of course, it turned out that no-one in the office had thought about it like that anyway – it was just me thinking into things way too much. As usual.

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